


Trust Me

by ohgodmyeyes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Meandering Emotional Vomit, Mental Illness, One Shot, One True Pairing, PTSD, Past Infidelity, Protective Padmé Amidala, Reconciliation, Romance, past mistakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:20:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21753622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala’s marriage has been in trouble for a long time now.Anakin’s most recent transgression earned him a short stay away from his family at a hotel. He’s been back for a week, and things feel as though they’ve gone (mostly) back to normal.He is lonely, though, and feeling it more acutely than ever.Padmé just wants to talk to him, but it’s been a very long time.Can they reconnect at all, or is Ani destined for the basement again?
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 28
Kudos: 60





	Trust Me

Anakin Skywalker, still clad in the black suit he’d worn to work, tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. It was the same ceiling he’d been looking up at in this way for a long time, and the familiarity was comforting to him. Familiar, too, was the warm, calm sensation of his favourite rum entering his bloodstream, along with the dark emptiness of the room.

It was filled with all the same furniture as any nice, suburban home should be: His wife was a successful politician, and an ambitious person; she’d always made sure that they had a lovely home. However, even with their twin children asleep upstairs right now, Anakin felt very much by himself in the house. That was often the case, at this time of night.

Typically it suited him perfectly, especially when he sat down to drink each evening. Recently, however, he had made a rather grave mistake, and because of it, he was noticing more than he usually would the barrenness of the space around him.

Right now, he was alone and he was unhappy about it.

He sighed, looked around, and got up from the sofa to get himself another drink, from a bottle in a small cabinet he kept across the room. It was his third glass that night, which meant that he was _just_ starting to feel the effects of his rum in a way that might stop his mind from running on overdrive for a while. 

This, at least, gave him a small sense of relief.

He lifted the bottle with his left hand, and clutched his glass in his right as he poured. The former was made of flesh and bone, and was much like anyone else’s— except that he made sure to keep the arm attached to it incredibly strong. The latter was a robotic prosthetic of his own design that extended down from his elbow: He’d had much of the arm he’d been born with on that side of his body blown off by a roadside bomb a long time ago, somewhere very far away. He’d been nineteen, then, and was approaching forty, now.

He hardly noticed compensating for the loss, by this point.

As he was about to sit back down in his seat on the sofa, light from a car pulling into the driveway of the house briefly illuminated the living room through the window. 

Anakin watched it a moment; saw the headlights dim, and then flick off. As he heard the sound of the car’s door shutting and locking, he resumed his descent and sat down. There was no point in trying to pretend that he was doing anything other than what he was doing. 

The front door to the house creaked open, now. Anakin hadn’t noticed that he did not have a single light turned on until Padmé— also dressed in now slightly-rumpled business-wear— asked him, “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

His response was a shrug, even though she couldn’t have seen it.

She waited for an answer— an answer made of words— but one did not materialize. She shook her head as she walked the opposite direction into the kitchen to set down her purse and turn on a light. She muttered to herself, “At least nothing seems to have changed.”

Anakin tilted his head back and took most of his glass in one swallow, as he did when a thought— or in this case, a phrase— especially stung him.

He deserved it, he knew.

Feeling he’d earned it was the reason he normally would not have responded. However, given the gravity of his most recent transgression, he felt he had nothing to lose when he muttered back, “Not a fucking thing.”

“What?” Padmé had already been starting her own nightly ritual of putting together lunches to send to school with Luke and Leia the next day.

Anakin didn’t think before he near-shouted, “ _Not a fucking thing!_ ”

Padmé spun around, and faced her husband from across the foyer separating the two rooms. “Why are you yelling? Are you trying to wake up the kids?”

He didn’t get up, or look at her. Just said, “No. Sorry.”

She sighed, and mumbled more to herself than to Anakin as she turned away, “Maybe it _was_ better to have you out of the house.” She was referencing a recent, brief stay he’d taken in a hotel room, away from the family. 

She had not wanted to do so much as look at him after finding out what he had done, and who he had done it with. Any wife would have felt that way upon finding out her husband was carrying on a relationship with their children’s babysitter.

Despite the severity of the error he had made, however— and despite his general behaviour, which toward himself was especially not good— Padmé found that she had missed him, while he’d been gone, and had in large part been glad to have him back.

Glad, that is, up until the point at which he’d shouted at her, half-drunk, from the sofa as she prepared lunches for their children at 10:30 at night.

She did not realize that he’d heard her last remark; didn’t see him react to it by finishing his drink and sighing heavily.

“I’m going to lie down,” he said as he began to rise slowly.

This made Padmé feel angry; it usually did, but this time especially so. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough ‘laying down’ lately?” She asked abruptly.

Anakin breathed deeply; put his emotions under control as best he could. He deserved that, too— and his wife did not deserve any wrath of his that was borne of his own shame. 

Instead of arguing, he said simply, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all you’re going to say about it, isn’t it?” It was all he ever said about anything these days, aside from ‘fuck’ and ‘what’. She could hardly remember, in fact, the last time he’d said much of anything else to her, outside the context of an argument.

Why had she missed him, again?

“I don’t have anything else to say, Padmé.”

She took a deep breath. “I can understand that.” She paused, and thought. This was already more engagement from him than she’d expected tonight, only a week or so after his having come home. She didn’t know, yet, whether it would prove to be a mistake, but she asked anyway from the kitchen, “Why did you do it, Ani?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” as he began to make his way to the door leading to the basement room in which he always slept.

“Of course not,” Padmé answered. Anakin never wanted to talk about anything anymore; she shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew for a fact that he used to talk to her all the time, but she could hardly remember it. Their children were barely ten years old, and it had been at least that long since Anakin and Padmé had spoken meaningfully to one another, without anger.

She was surprised when he bothered to ask, “Why do we need to talk about it?”

Even without expecting the question, the answer came easily. “Because it wasn’t like you.” And it hadn’t been. The two of them had come to take much about each other for granted over the years, but she had honestly believed Anakin’s loyalty to be something different altogether.

The knowledge that he had been unfaithful had hit her more like a shot in the back than a slap in the face. It had been inconceivable to her, before it had happened.

Anakin, these days, was many things: He drank to feel better, smoked far too many cigarettes, and could not be safely woken from sleep, outside of very specific circumstances. He had also been temperamental, and prone to breaking things in fits of anger for as long as it had been since they last really talked.

Infidelity, though, was something that Padmé would not have anticipated from her husband in a million years.

“How would you know what I’m like?” Another surprise; typically he would have already been in the basement by this point in the discussion— smoking, sleeping, or hitting his punching bag. The question hurt.

Padmé took a step away from the light of the kitchen and toward her husband, now in the foyer, shrouded in half-darkness. It obscured his features enough that she squinted a bit as she approached him and said, “I used to know.”

That was nearly enough to make him flinch. 

Even when they didn’t mean to, they were always doing this: It was why their conversations tended not to last.

With nothing to say to that, Anakin fell back on “I’m sorry,” wishing he’d never engaged to begin with.

Not because he was angry, but because even this much was too painful.

So, he continued on to the door to his basement: His refuge, and his cage. It was a lot of things to him, really.

Padmé normally wouldn’t have, because she usually saw no point, but tonight for some reason, she said to her husband, “I liked knowing you. I _miss_ knowing you, Ani.”

He sighed and tried to keep walking, slowly. He knew that if he stayed, this would just turn into another fight. He was sick of fights, and he now realized that he really did not need one so soon after coming home.

Padmé, however, was not going to let him go, this time. She walked from the edge of the kitchen and into the foyer, now, just as her husband was beginning to turn himself to leave. 

It had been a long time since she had touched him to do much else other than help him get ready to go to work-related events with her, on account of his arm. However, right now she reached up to grasp his shoulder— forcing him to face her, instead of continue his journey on into the basement.

He didn’t resist, but he did almost fall into the wall at her grabbing him— both because he was just the slightest bit drunk, and because he hadn’t expected it.

Now turned toward Padmé, he focused his vision on her. He asked, “What are you doing?”

She let go of him, and looked up at his face. She realized that she had forgotten how warm he always was, but only let that thought distract her for a second before answering, “I’m trying to talk to you.”

“I hate talking,” but he didn’t try to leave.

She examined him as best she could in the half-lit space, now that she was closer. His eyes were a bit glassy; his face looked too thin. His hair was getting too long, too, and she could have sworn that there were new lines etched on his face— lines that hadn’t been there, the last time she had really looked.

How long had it been, anyway?

She knew he hated talking; he always had— but he used to talk to her. All the time. Not knowing what else to say, she tried, “Could you do it for a few minutes, anyway? For me?”

His voice softened, but he insisted, “I don’t want to.” He wouldn’t admit it, yet, but he’d been shaken by her grabbing his arm. She rarely touched him unexpectedly anymore.

His wife had always been persistent and ambitious; had worked hard to build a career and a life for her family. However, she had not tried this hard to get Anakin to speak to her for a very long time. 

Partly, this made him feel bitter right now; partly, it made him want to stay.

He had missed Padmé— he’d missed her a lot. Not just as he’d sat in that sad little hotel room, rationalizing his actions and attempting to sort out his priorities, either, but for years. He’d missed her since they’d stopped speaking; since before their kids had even been born.

She noticed he hadn’t left yet, in spite of his protests. She asked once more, “Please?”

Anakin sighed. His back was against the wall, here, both literally and figuratively. He had missed her, but he hadn’t been looking forward to this. He shifted very uncomfortably; was quiet a long while. He looked at his wife, and then at the floor. Eyes downcast, he conceded, “Okay,” followed by, “...but I need to sit down.”

Padmé nodded; moved aside to let him back into the living room. As she followed, he nearly collapsed back into his seat on the sofa.

Gingerly, she sat down at the other end. She was not accustomed to sitting with him like this; she hadn’t been for a long time. She held herself stiffly, as Anakin leaned back again to look at the ceiling.

They didn’t speak, for a time. Finally, Padmé reiterated her previous observation, “It wasn’t like you, Ani.”

“I know,” flatly, still looking up.

“Then why? I know we haven’t—”

“It wasn’t just that.” He knew what she meant, but his relationship with that girl— to him, anyway— hadn’t really been about sex.

Padmé paused at this before asking more quietly, “Then what was it?”

Anakin sighed, and closed his eyes. He truly did not want to talk about this; he didn’t feel there was any point.

However, Padmé had not sat with him this way for a very long time, and he found that even in his reluctance to speak, he also truly did not wish for her to leave.

In the interest of keeping her there beside him, “She was... nice to me.”

“Nice to you?” Padmé felt both curious and incredulous. ‘Nice’ was certainly a way of putting it.

“Nice to me,” he confirmed.

“Lots of people are nice, Anakin,” she said before continuing a bit stiffly, “...it doesn’t mean you get to—”

“Fuck!” He fell back on his usual method of expressing his frustration when he argued with her. This particular exclamation typically indicated that he felt misunderstood.

Padmé knew this; asked, “Then _what_?” She needed to know why he’d done this. Things between them had been the same kind of terrible for years— what had made him go and do this now?

Anakin looked out the window, then, instead of at the ceiling. He stared out at the blackness, hesitated, and then said so cautiously as to sound reluctant, “She reminded me of you.”

“What?”

“You hate it when I talk about this, now, but she treated me the way you used to. ...Before.”

Padmé looked down at her lap. “You know I can’t just—”

“ _I didn’t fucking know it was you!_ ” He shouted this; he hadn’t meant to, but this why he hadn’t wanted to have a conversation like this to begin with: It always felt like they came back to what he had done to her— when she was pregnant with their twins.

She sighed. He always got so angry when this came up that she never did manage to get to the point— which reinforced her view of him. “It’s not about what you did, Ani.” 

What he’d done was nearly kill her: He had gone to sleep without her, and she had tried to wake him. He’d been getting so much better, back then, that she never expected him to reach out with his hand— his only hand— and come close to choking the life out of her.

He’d thought she was trying to kill him, because in his nightmares, he hadn’t been in his bed at home, but in the desert. Somewhere on the other side of the planet, surveying pieces of his friends with no time to mourn them, as men with guns charged him from all sides. That he’d lived had been nothing short of a miracle; that he only lost an arm was a blessing.

One of the caveats to his survival was the fact that to him, that night, Padmé had not been his wife. She had been one of those masked men, instead. 

He hadn’t realized until he had opened his eyes that he was, indeed, at home and by then it was too late: Padmé had been laying unconscious on the floor, still pregnant with babies now in distress, and with terrifying red marks encircling her neck.

Anakin had performed what he would have called ‘casualty aid’, and called for an ambulance right away.

She survived, he was never charged with a crime, and by some new miracle the twins had been born safely— albeit early.

In spite of all that could have gone wrong and didn’t, however, their relationship never recovered. They’d barely spoken since she woke up, in fact.

“If it isn’t what I did, then why didn’t you ever trust me again?” More quietly, “I don’t understand.”

They’d begun this conversation dozens of times over years and years; it had always ended in either stony silence, or a shouting match. Perhaps they hadn’t ventured to have it for the first time it soon enough; perhaps they hadn’t had the language to say what they needed to say to one another, back then. Either way, it had never gotten quite so far as even this.

Both Anakin and Padmé were frightened, now— walking into uncharted territory.

When Padmé had awakened from her coma after the incident, she found that her husband had appeared to have transformed into a different person; a person she couldn’t reach.

Carefully, hands clasped in her lap, she told him now, “I didn’t stop trusting you because you hurt me. I... stopped trusting you because you seemed to stop trying.”

Anakin finally looked away from the window and at his wife. “I stopped trying because I’m a piece of shit, Padmé.” As his eyes drifted back to the window, he added, “When I did that to you, it was when I realized I would never get better.”

His body and his mind were both screaming at him, by now, to go to the cabinet to get another drink, but he resisted.

Now Padmé was the one taken aback. “Ani, you didn’t mean...”

“It doesn’t matter what I meant!” He was frustrated, but he collected himself as best he could. Gently, “What kind of person does what I did?”

Padmé sighed. “A person who’s sick.” No, she had not gone so far in speaking to him for a long while— it felt unfamiliar, but not bad.

In fact, she was beginning to find that it felt fairly good to talk— at least, to her.

Anakin shifted uncomfortably again, however, as he added for her: “Too sick to get better.”

She didn’t want him to go in circles. “You _had_ been getting better.”

He really had been: Before he’d done what he did, Padmé’s pregnancy had been one of the happiest times they’d ever had together, particularly since Anakin had come home from the war. They’d been happy together, then— and hopeful.

His mistake in attacking her had been an aberration; an irregularity on an otherwise smooth road to recovery from what he’d been through. It had been very serious, granted— but to Padmé it had never been reflective of his identity as a person.

She was only realizing now that to him, his error had _become_ his identity. 

How could he ever have thought so little of himself?

Padmé was overcome with a sudden urge to grasp Anakin— his hand, or his leg— but she was seated too far away from him on the sofa to reach out to him. Instead, she said, “You have to want to get better, Ani. You used to.”

He sighed, then, and with a pained expression, “You think I don’t want to be better than this?”

As diplomatically she could, Padmé said, “Sometimes I do wonder.”

“Fuck,” he answered under his breath, this time. Then he looked at her, “I tried for ten years.”

Still as kindly as she could manage, “It’s been twenty since you got hurt.” He’d only been trying for half the time since he’d been wounded.

To him, it felt like too much time had passed in the first place, for how little progress he thought he’d made. To Padmé, it didn’t feel like enough time— for the same reason. Even with the choking incident, she had been so proud of him; of what he’d done. How could he think she wouldn’t forgive him? How could he not forgive himself?

Anakin looked back up at the ceiling again. He didn’t know what to say, now. He was quiet a long time.

Finally, he barely whispered, “She was nice to me the same way you were, before you found out I was really a piece of shit.” His mind added, _and she was too young to know to run away once she found out, too,_ which was true, but did not need to be said.

“You’re not a piece of shit, Ani.” 

He laughed, loudly, to indicate he thought that was ridiculous.

“I mean it,” she insisted. She wished, now, that they’d been able to get this far in the conversation years ago.

Late was always better than never, she thought.

So she continued, “I was scared of you— scared _for_ you— because I thought you’d given up on us. When I woke up, it seemed like you were just...”

“...gone,” he finished for her. He’d never actually, physically left, but the truth was that since his wife had recovered from his inadvertent attack, he had never truly been back home. “I felt like I had to protect you from myself, and when you stopped trying to talk to me, I figured you had realized you had to protect yourself, too.”

She thought she had, but she’d misunderstood. He never had wanted to give up— he wasn’t dangerous; he was frightened.

Anakin continued, “I thought that if I could still do that to you, after getting so much better...” he trailed off; shrugged dejectedly, and continued to fight the urge to get up for a drink.

Padmé had not realized it, but she had begun to close the distance between them by sliding more closely to her husband on the couch. She said, “All it meant was that you had to keep going, Ani.” Before she knew it, her hand was resting on his leg.

It hadn’t rested there for years. He felt just the same as he always had: Hard, and warm.

Anakin felt his breath catch at his wife’s touch. He looked down at his leg, and saw the glint of her wedding ring in the darkness. It was reflecting the light from the kitchen; the one she’d turned on. It was a stark reminder that it was her sitting here with him, talking about this— not anyone else. 

It had been far too long, but it felt right to him in a way that he could not have described other than to say it was natural.

He loved Padmé; he’d always loved her so much.

He still had not spoken, so she tried something that she had learned was effective after he’d come home hurt. “Anakin?”

His name usually brought him back; indeed, it brought him back now. He looked at her face, then.

He moved his hand— his right one; mechanical or not, it was always the one he went to use first, if he could— and placed it atop her own on his leg.

“Why should I keep trying,” he finally asked, “if I’m going to be dangerous to you whether I try or not?”

It was a fair, and poignant question.

Padmé was prepared. She’d gone over this in her head many times over many years, and although they were out of practice in speaking to one another, she answered easily: “Because I love you, Ani.” She added soon after, “I thought you loved me, too.” He still said it, sometimes, but only when they were fighting. Often she felt he only ever said it to prove a point.

“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything, Padmé. I always, _always_ have.” He said this in a husky whisper, and then he squeezed her hand with his own highly-advanced substitutes for fingers.

She smiled at the sensation, because she’d forgotten how unique and wonderful it felt.

She said back to him, quietly, “I’ve always loved you, too, Anakin. I’ve loved you since you were that sweet little blonde boy I met when I was barely a teenager. I loved you when we found each other again, too.” She paused to look into his eyes; make sure he was really all here, so she knew he understood. “I loved you after you got hurt, I loved you after _I_ got hurt, and I love you now, too.”

Any other night, she’d have added that she didn’t love some of his behaviour, but this was not the time. This was not the time at all.

Anakin’s voice remained low, and quiet. “I don’t understand how anyone could love me now.” That girl had thought she did— but he was sure he knew better.

Anakin believed fervently that he was unlovable.

Hearing him say it out loud hurt Padmé very much. She had never stopped loving him, after all. Even as he had damaged her trust and descended into an inebriated silence over a period of years— even then, she always loved him.

She supposed, now, that she’d been too quiet, too.

Her mind repeated itself: _Better late than never,_ and she placed her free hand— the one not touching his leg and being held— on his back. He did not tense, even for a moment: The familiarity of her touch was still a comfort. 

As she leaned in toward him, “I do, Anakin. I love you— right now.” Then, more quietly, “I’m sorry... if it ever feels like I don’t.”

She examined his face again; noticed his jaw was trembling. This surprised her.

“I’m fine,” he said. It was an automatic response. He wasn’t fine; he’d just spent ten years thinking that his wife could never love him again— and now here she was, touching him, and telling him she’d never stopped.

How could he have been so stupid?

How much time had he wasted hating himself?

_What had he done?_

It was no longer just his jaw; now the rest of Anakin was shaking, too. She could feel it through her hands on his back and leg, and it shocked her: she had not seen him cry in years.

Between jolting breaths, he apologized, but the words barely sounded like words through his coming tears.

Briefly, Padmé didn’t know what to do, but then she remembered who she was really sitting with, and she slid her arm around his waist. She moved more closely to him on the couch, too; so closely that her leg pressed into his. She squeezed him tightly.

She had nearly forgotten what that felt like, as well.

“Ani?” She tried his name again, but he continued to cry. To her, suddenly, he was that little blonde boy again, and all she wanted was to make him stop hurting. “It’s okay, Ani. _It’s okay_.”

He caught his breath, finally; wiped his eyes with his flesh-and-bone hand. So quietly that he almost couldn’t be heard, “How can it be okay, now?” He’d been operating under the pretence, for a long time, that their love was doomed.

It had sent him into the basement, away from his children, and into the arms of another person who could not ever have made it better.

He wished more than ever, now, that he could travel back to the time of his first mistake, and just keep trying. He’d never thought it could be so simple.

He repeated himself, a bit more loudly, “How can it _ever_ be okay?”

Padmé, too, had begun to tremble now, but it only made her tighten her grip on him. She, too, had made a grave mistake in thinking that her husband understood how far he had come, or how proud she had always been of him.

She’d always been prepared to forgive him for hurting her, but hurting her had made him shut down. They’d been going in this circle for years, and neither of them had ever seen it clearly enough to make it stop.

“Anakin.”

“What?”

“I love you. Do you love me?” Tears were beginning to cloud her vision.

“With absolutely everything I have, Padmé,” as he looked into her eyes. They were beautiful.

“Then that’s how it’s going to be okay.”

They sat and stared at one another, eyes wet. Eventually, Anakin turned his body to face her’s. Carefully and tentatively— it truly had been a long time— he lifted his arms and placed them around her as gently as he could.

She had been so strong for him for so long that he had forgotten how small she felt in his embrace. It terrified him, because he hated the thought that he might hurt her— but holding her felt like coming home. 

Anakin had not been home in far, far too long. 

Padmé slid her hand off of his leg, and wrapped it around him, along with the other one. She breathed in deeply, and tried to remember the last time she’d savoured her husband’s warmth this way. She relished the strength of his body; the body she had begun to fear, when she thought that the soul inside of it had been drifting away. She wished she’d known the truth sooner.

“Padmé?”

“Yes?”

They buried their faces in one another; his in her hair, and her’s in his chest. They could still, easily, understand one another.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“It’s okay,” she told him.

_”I’m so, so sorry.”_

“I’m sorry, too, Ani.” 

They both were, and they both had been for a long time.

They sat and held one another for a while, now. They needed to: It had been too long since they’d been able to, because they had both been so foolish.

When they finally pulled back from each other, Anakin placed the palm of his right hand— hard and cool through the black leather glove he used to conceal its intricacies— on his wife’s face.

She smiled. “I’d forgotten how that felt,” she admitted to him. Then, as she rested her hands on his chest, “I missed it.”

Anakin chuckled, somehow. He’d relaxed significantly since the beginning of their conversation, and for once it had nothing to do with his rum.

Padmé smiled, because she loved to hear him laugh, genuinely. It was a sound that she, again, had not heard in a very long time— to hear it now was like seeing a dear friend she thought had died.

“Thank you for saying that,” Anakin said as he smiled back at her.

“Don’t thank me for telling you the truth, Ani,” she scolded him gently. She reached up to place her own hand on his face, too.

He felt that he had to, so he apologized yet again, “Padmé— _I’m sorry._ ”

“It’s okay,” she reassured him. She looked into his eyes, and noted that they were as beautiful to her now as they had been when the two of them were little more than children.

He’d been through enough, by now, that nobody would have believed he was younger than her; however, in that moment, all she wanted to do was take care of him. Not like a mother, though, and not like a warden, either— she wanted to take care of him as his wife.

Anakin desperately needed that type of care, and he could never get it from anyone else.

Knowing this, he asked her, “What do I do, now? What do I do to fix it?” With more than a hint of desperation, “ _How do I get you back, Padmé?_ ” Now that he was holding her again, he was not about to make the mistake of letting her go.

All at once, he did feel as though he were nineteen again— like he could do anything, so long as he had her love.

“Just be you, Ani. Be who you really are.”

With great uncertainty, “I’m not sure that person exists anymore.”

“He does,” Padmé answered quietly. “I’m looking at him right now.”

Another laugh from Anakin, because although to hear her say that meant so much to him, it also felt just a little absurd.

“Shh,” said Padmé. “Please just trust me.”

“I always have,” Anakin told her as he finally leaned down for a kiss; a kiss he’d been waiting for since long before this conversation had begun.

Padmé returned it eagerly, because she had been waiting, too.

By the time it was finished, both of them had nearly begun to cry again. Thankfully, as they pulled away from each other they each noticed this, and so they both began to laugh instead.

They hadn’t laughed together for a long time before now, either, so they did that for a while as well. By the time they were quiet, Anakin had buried his mechanical fingers in Padmé’s hair. His other hand still held her warmly and tightly from behind. Neither of them could quit smiling, now.

Anakin was happier in this moment than he could remember being since he first found out he was going to be a father.

His mind was swirling with optimism, and ideas: Things that he wanted to say and do; time for which he was desperate to make up. He knew that there were things he needed to accomplish that would be difficult— and painful— for this to work. 

However, he knew now that no pain or adversity could match that of being separated from his family.

His week in that hotel away from them had been laced with distractions, but mostly, it had been hell. That was how he knew that he had to come home, even if it was just to the basement.

If he could be here instead, in the arms of the only woman he would ever truly love...

Well, in that case, then Anakin Skywalker could do anything. 

“Anakin...”

“What is it, Padmé? I’ll do anything— name it, and I’ll do it.”

She smiled. “For now, I only want one thing.”

He whispered into her ear, “Say it, my love.” He hadn’t called her that for more than a decade; it made goosebumps pepper her skin, and new warmth swell inside of her when she heard it.

“Come upstairs, Ani,” she told him. “Come upstairs, and come to bed.”

This rendered him speechless, for a moment, because of all the things he thought she might ask him to do, that had been the last of them.

Except for help with putting on that old army uniform he hated so much, he never went up there anymore.

“Are you... sure?” He felt nervous, and looked it, too.

“Yes. I’m sure.” She ran the hand that she’d had on his face through that sweet, blonde mess she had always loved so much, and added, “It’s where you belong.”

They both got up from the sofa at this; if Anakin had been at all unsteady before, he was not now. He neither felt drunk, nor any urge to drink— not at this moment.

Right now, all he wanted to do was join his wife.

So, hand-in-hand, they walked back into the foyer together— and this time, Anakin did not depart down the hallway to descend to the basement.

This time, he went with Padmé: Up, up; until he was at the top of the stairs with her, at the entrance to her— _their_ — bedroom.

Because Anakin had always been a gentleman, he asked once more, “Are you sure?”

Padmé stood on her toes to kiss him, for the first time in a long time. Then, gently, “Yes, Ani. _I’m sure._ ”

He kissed her back deeply and passionately, as he slid his two contrasting hands eagerly around her waist and pulled her body in toward his. As they made their way to their bed as gracefully as they ever had together— finally wrapped up in each other’s arms once again— Anakin made sure to gently kick the door to the room shut.

He wanted to be careful not to wake his children, as he began the process of reconnecting with his wife.

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve read The Babysitter, then you already know why I wrote this. If you haven’t, I hope you enjoyed it anyway. ❤️
> 
> Thank you!!


End file.
